Control of cooling air flow delivery in conventional data centers is typically based upon the selection of various floor tiles having patterns created by manufacturers. Oftentimes, conventional floor tiles do not include mechanisms configured to enable varied airflow through the floor tiles. Instead, the floor tiles are configured to provide a substantially fixed volume of cooling air to the racks as designed by the manufacturers. Other types of floor tiles have mechanisms that enable adjustment of cooling air flow through the floor tiles. However, these types of mechanisms are typically manually operated, which require technicians to physically re-position the mechanisms to vary cooling air flow.
In addition, conventional mechanisms for adjusting air flow through ventilation tiles also suffer from an inefficiency caused by the adjusting mechanism blocking the flow of air when in an open position. For example, a conventional ventilation tile uses a plurality of slats where the slats turn 90 degrees to open the vent and allow air to flow through. The presence of the turned slats, in the middle of the air stream, causes a significant amount of blockage, which decreases the effectiveness of the ventilation system. This leads to inefficiencies and wasted energy usage to cool the components housed in the data center, which amounts to increased data center operating costs.
Thus, a need in the art exists for ventilation tiles having mechanisms for adjusting the amount of airflow through ventilation tiles, while substantially reducing the blockage of air when the ventilation tiles are in open positions.